Gallagher, Leo, 1887-1963

Biography

Leo Gallagher was a Los Angeles attorney who specialized in labor law, and was known throughout his nearly 40-year practice for the defense of the rights of labor unionists, minorities and the poor. He was active during his life with the vigilant defense of the people's rights to free speech and assembly, and was associated with the active defense of Communist Party members and sympathizers in the United States and abroad during the length of his law practice, beginning in the mid-1920s in California.

Gallagher was born July 11, 1887 in St. Mary's, Kansas. After his family moved to Texas he attended grammar school in El Paso from 1898 until 1902. At 15 years of age he transferred to Canisius College in Buffalo, New York where he graduated from high school in 1905. After obtaining an A.B. degree from the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. in 1907, he went to Yale University Law School; he graduated with a law degree in 1910. He went to the St. Bernard's Theological Seminary, a Jesuit-run school in New York state for the next two years, and in 1912 he continued his studies for the priesthood at the Innsbruck Philosophical Institute in Austria, from which he graduated in 1915 with his doctorate degree. In total he spent six years of his early twenties studying to become a Catholic priest. After a brief trip to Italy Gallagher returned to the United States, working briefly as an agricultural worker in California in 1916 before entering a military-training school. During World War I he entered the army and was assigned to a medical unit but was transferred to the headquarters staff at Camps Travers, Funston, and Lee before he was discharged in 1919 at Camp Funston, Kansas with the rank of second lieutenant.

Gallagher returned to Texas after the war and taught a short time at Creighton University. In 1922 he passed the Texas bar exam and was admitted to the State Bars in Texas and California. He began his law practice in 1922 in California and joined the faculty at the Los Angeles Southwestern University Law School in 1923. His interest in labor causes and progressive politics began in the mid-1920s when he attended meetings of the Industrial Workers of the World during the dock strikes in San Pedro. He began his association with the International Labor Defense (ILD) in 1925. The ILD, the U.S. branch of the International Red Aid, headquartered in the Soviet Union, was dedicated to the active defense of political and labor activists.

In 1931 Gallagher acted as counsel to the defendants in a criminal syndicalist trial in Imperial Valley, California. However, the following year Gallagher was forced to voluntarily resign his position at the Southwestern University Law School for his defense of the Mooney Runners, students who staged a protest at an event during the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1933 he defended Tom Mooney, a San Francisco labor unionist convicted for the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing. Gallagher forced a reluctant San Francisco court to try Mooney on a remaining indictment against him. Mooney was acquitted of this charge because the trial showed that fraudulent testimony was used to indict him in the first instance. In 1934, he defended A. E. Smith, general secretary of the Canadian Labor Defense, in his sedition trial. He was also an attorney for defendants in the Sacramento Criminal Syndicalist trial held in 1934 and 1935.

Gallagher was sent in 1933 as part of an ILD delegation to assist in the legal defense of communist George Dimitroff, charged in Nazi Germany with the arson fire that destroyed the Reichstag building. He was later excluded from the trial and in early 1934 was deported as an undesirable alien. He returned to California and resumed his law practice in association with other progressive attorneys. From 1937 to 1939, he was in practice with Abraham Lincoln Wirin and Grover Johnson, continuing for another two years with Wirin after Johnson left the firm. From 1941 to 1947, as part of Katz, Gallagher, and Margolis, Gallagher practiced with Charles Katz and Ben Margolis. After Katz left, Gallagher and Margolis were associated with John McTernan and Milton Tyre. In 1949 Gallagher left to go into practice by himself.

He was a charter member of the National Lawyers Guild and a sponsor of the Civil Rights Congress after the ILD merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form this organization. Gallagher was active in many electoral campaigns. Although he belonged to groups associated with the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) such as the ILD, and he took an active interest in defending party members in court, he remained outside of the Party during his life. Moreover, he ran many times on the Democratic Party ticket in the state primaries. From 1948 to 1952 he was a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee.

He first ran in 1933 in the primary race for a seat on the Los Angeles Municipal Court bench and lost. He subsequently ran for associate justice on the California Supreme Court in 1934, and for the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1936, losing the primaries in both races. In 1938, he entered the California Secretary of State campaign on a combined Democratic and Communist Party ticket and lost. Not until 1949 did he choose to run again in a primary race, and this time it was for a seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education. He was never elected to office although he used his campaigns as a platform to advocate progressive programs and ideas.

Gallagher was married in 1938 to the former Hannah Block, a native of Germany whom he had met when she visited the United States in 1923. They had one daughter, Monica. The family resided in Los Angeles for many years. Gallagher retired in 1961 after many years of working in progressive organizations and defending political prisoners and labor unionists. In the early 1960s his health deteriorated and he was hospitalized in Los Angeles where he died on September 28, 1963.

From the guide to the Leo Gallagher Papers, 1922-1963, (Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.)